HTPC build stalled - help?

[Lone Cloud]

I built a home theater pc a year ago for S2 satellite reception and for some other entertainment uses. Used a Gigabyte motherboard (graphics card incororated) , an AMD 920 chip 4 gig of RAM , my own graphics, sound cards.

Two hard drives - one a 1 tb SATA drive and the other a 500 GB ribbon cable type.

I had initially installed XP 64 bit and then over it Vista 32 bit OSs.
On startup it would ask me which operating system I wanted to use, but if I clicked on the XP 64 it wouldn't work

So I got this bright idea to disconnect the 1 tb drive and install XP on the 500 GB drive, then disconnect the 500 GB drive and reconnect the 1 TB drive and install Vista.

So I disconnected the 1 TB and put the XP 64 disk in and nothing. I reconnected the 1 TB drive and nothing. It stalls at the screen where it says "Verifying ...data" - So now I get no S2 and basically own a 1200 dollar anchor

Does anyone have any idea what happened? What I might do to fix it?

I would appreciate it guys.

 

[delta_charlie]

Hi, a few thoughts come to mind. First hit DEL or whatever key your MB uses to access the BIOS at boot up and check the boot order. If you want to boot from the install CD make sure the CD drive is listed as the first boot choice. That should get the computer booted into the install. If that works then most of your computer is ok. Just need to figure out what happened to the HDs. I have not worked on a mixed SATA and IDE computer so I not sure on this but you might want to check the jumpers on the drives and see if they are set to master, slave or cable select. Maybe start with just one drive hooked up at a time and make sure it is set to master and try to boot (go back and change the boot order) see if either drive can boot. If not the MBR may be damaged. You might be able to repair it from the install CD. Hope this helps, DC PS - just had another thought, check the CD drive too as it may also be IDE and when there are two IDE drives one needs to be master and the other the slave.

 

[Lone Cloud]

Thanks. will try. But what are the "jumpers" on the drives? They both have a connector that comes from the power supply and another cable with more wires in it. I don't know what the jumper is

 

[dougbrown]

Lone Cloud, as I understand it you are unable to boot up on the install CD? Is you CD drive ATA(IDE) or SATA? If ATA (ie ribbon connector) is it slaved together (connected on the same ribbon) with the 500GB drive? If so you need to make sure that one is set as the master, preferably the 500, and the other is set as a slave. There are pins on the drives that are used to change these settings. On the CD drive they should be marked something like Mstr, Slv and CS. on the hard drive it may not be as clear, but there may be a diagram printed on the label.
Also your problem may be something as simple as a scratch or blemish on the disk. I have found some drives will have grease in them on the drive gears and sometimes this works its way onto the disk.

 

[delta_charlie]

Thanks. will try. But what are the "jumpers" on the drives? They both have a connector that comes from the power supply and another cable with more wires in it. I don't know what the jumper is

Hi, it should be near the the other wire connectors and looks a lot like a spot a connector plug goes but there should be a small (about 1/8 x 1/4) block thing. That's the jumper and it is moved from one set of pins to another to change the master/slave/cable select settings.

Look on the decal of the HD for the positions.

Something else to look into is how was the HDs setup? Were both OS's installed on the same HD or did one OS get installed on one and the other had the other OS?

The boot manager on a dual boot computer needs to know where the different OS's are and it might have gotten mixed up with the swapping of the drives.



Hope this helps, DC

 

[prof-ret]

It sounds like you have no problem or fear of installing operating systems so I would recomment this:
a. because it is not a good plan to have a 32bit system and a 64 bit system on a single machine using the Microsoft boot manager I would say download the vista 64 bit operating system from Microsoft and use your 32 bit vista key to install it . You are allowed to do this for one machine only but don't install anything just yet.
b. In a mixed SATA and IDE environment unless you change the boot order in BIOS the SATA drive will be the first drive to boot.
c. The since you have a newer board look at the ribbon cable if it has printed on it "system" next to one connector and words like HD 1 or Drive 0 next to one connector and HD 2 or Drive 2 next to the other then IDE HD drive and CD/DVD must be set to "CS". The HD should be connected to HD 1 or Drive 0.
d. Now it pains me to say this but -- I think you should format both drives. Since we are not sure what is where then its the only thing to do at this time.
e. You can do this with the install cd/dvd. Run it to the point where you are asked where to install and then format the disks and then exit.
f. Start with XP first. Install it on the drive you want it on.
g. Install Vista (I don't remember but I think you can install the 64bit without having installed the 32 bit system first)
h. You should (if I remember correctly) get a warning about about an older operating system but don't worry about it.
i. When you start you system with both OS's installed you should get an option to boot into vista or "an older version of Windows" (or something similar) this is the XP OS.

GOOD LUCK

 

[Lone Cloud]

I am so lost. The disk drive is a dvd Sata. It is selected as boot first. It does not share any connector with any hard disk drive

I don't see any way to pick master or slave on the hard drives.

 

[dougbrown]

Lone Cloud,
Does the CD/DVD drive light flash at all when you try to boot up?
Or is the "verifying data" message coming from the system?
Have you tried booting without a disk in the CD drive?
If so what message do you get?

 

[prof-ret]

LC
I missed a few things in the other post (had one too many adult beverages).
First, if your system worked with the 500 gb drive connected to the cd/dvd drive and you haven’t changed anything (like the ribbon connection or the jumpers on the back of the disks) your hardware is set correctly and don’t worry about that.
Second, when you loaded the different OS’s with only one drive connected you cut the communications between the two drives and OS’s. If you all you did is installed the Vista OS on the 1 TB SATA drive and nothing else then it should boot with the 500 GB drive disconnected. So try to boot with both the cd/dvd drive and the 500 GB disconnected.
What is the complete error message? What little you provided indicates a hardware problem or at least the first and last words are part of a hardware error which is why I am suggesting that you boot only with the SATA drive.
If you have been connecting and disconnecting drives make sure all connections are correctly installed not just the drive connectors but anything near the area you are working.
I still think that trying to dual boot a 32 bit OS and a 64 bit OS should not be done with the Microsoft boot manager. Use a third party boot manager instead. I am going to do the same thing as you with a 64 bit Windows 7 and a 32 bit XP OS and I am going to use a program called “GAG” it is free (majorgeeks.com) and I have used it successfully in the past.
Let me know how your machine reacts and we can go from there.

 

[Lone Cloud]

I got into the bios again and set the dvd for boot priority. With only the 500 GB IDE drive connected, I was able to install the 64 bit XP.

Then I reconnected the 1 tb sata which has Vista 32 already on it, and I started the computer.

Well no message for selection of OS and it goes directly to XP. So I went into the bios again and set for dvd again and disconnected the 500 GB IDE.

As soon as I entered the product key it basically allowed me to get into the Vista OS that was already on there. Then I installed Vista anew on top of the old Vista.

I do not know whay any of that worked because I had done the same thing before and gotten nothing but that "Verifying DMI data" message.

Now I hope that when I start, with everything connected and Vista on the 1 TB drive being the last OS installed, that it will start with the screen that asks me what OS I want to use, and that it will, if I select XP, go to the 500 GB drive.

Thanks for your help, but per usual, the issue is closer to resolution, without me having any idea why. I'll update this and thanks for the tip about GAG

 

[prof-ret]

Okay, here is what happened. When you removed the sata disk and connected the 500g or ide disk your machine saw only a dvd and one hard drive which it made drive c thus allowing you to install xp. When you disconnected the ide drive and then connected the sata drive again your machine saw only the dvd and one hard drive which it made drive c. You will not get a menu to select which operating system you can use because when installed neither operating system "knew" about the other.
What will happen is that you will most likely boot the vista os because of the bios.
What you can do instead of GAG is to use the alternate boot menu (usely F12 or F8) the bios screen will you which key to use to select the drive/os you want.
What happen most likely is there was some corruption to the sata drive master boot record which you bypassed by going to the dvd and cleaned up when you started to reinstall vista.
I have tested both boot options (gag and alt menu) with Win 7 64 bit and XP 32bit. Both worked.

Pete

 

[Lone Cloud]

I'm almost to the point of trying it. Prepared to reconnect tonight if it doesn't work, I'm thinking of trying to put a shortcut icon into the 1 tb drive for the xp 64. I'll let you know.